this excessive suffering which has come to our family will in some of little way serve to make atlanta a better city. georgia a better state, and america a better country. just how, i do not know but i have the faith to believe it will. and if i am right, then our suffering is not in vain. ..

>> before we get started, i wanted to mention the upcoming events that includes james carroll on march 11 with his new book, and unger on april 4 more "american tempest: how the tea party sparked a revolution." others include billy collins and governor duvall patrick. you can find more information in the events flier.

after the talk this afternoon, there's time for questions after which there's a book signing at the table, and you can get signed copies up at the registers. when you know you buy a book from the harvard bookstore, you're supporting a local institution who cares about books, and this author series would not be possible without that support. we are pleased to have c-span's here recording for book tv. if you have a question, wait for the microphone to come to you before asking your question. now is a good time to make sure you silenced your cell phones. this afternoon, i'm pleased to introduce maya jasanoff. she's an aword winning historian

and bringing a new story in the untold work, the 60,000 men and women who remained loyal to the british empyre. the loyalists decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere and all over the world. the boston globe calls this a masterful account and others note losers seldom get to write the history, but the american loyalists finally got their historian. jasanoff tells their story with uncommon style and grace. maya jasanoff was awarded the 2005 couper prize and was a book of the year selection in the economists, the guardian, and the sunday times. we're pleased to bring her to harvard bookstore this afternoon. please join me in welcoming maya

jasanoff. [applause] >> well, thank you, all for coming, and let me thank harvard bookstore for hosting me. i've been coming here since my undergraduate day which was a long time, and as my tastes matured, this bookstore has been here to fulfill them. i'll begin at the beginning with this book. there were two sides on the american revolution, but only one was on display early on the afternoon of december 25th when george washington road on a horse to new york city. there was an escort of armed guards and knox was not far behind. long lines of civilians trailed after them, some on horse back, some on foot, wearing sprigs of laurel in their hats. hundreds crammed into the streets to watch. since 1776 through war and peace

negotiations, new york had been occupieded by the british army. today, the british were going. a cannon shot at 1 p.m. founded the departure of the last british troops from their posts, clam moried into boats, and road out to the transports in the harbor. the british occupation of the united states was officially over. george washington's entrance into new york city was the closest thing the winners of the american revolution had to a victory parade. for a week, they celebrated the evacuation with feasts and bonfires, and the largest fire works display seen in north america. generations of new yorkers congressmen rated december 25th as evacuation day and later was folded into the enduring celebration in november, the national togetherness day, or

thanksgiving. mixed in the crowds that november day, there were other less cheerful faces, for loyalists, coal -- colonists sided with the british. tens of thousands of loyalists moved to safety into new york and other british held cities. this withdrawal raised questions about their future. what kind of treatment could they expect in the new united states? jailed? attacked? retain their property or hold on to their jobs? confronting real doubts about their lives, liberty, and potential happiness in the united states, 60,000 loyalists decide to take their chances and follow the british elsewhere into the british empire. they took 15,000 black slaves with them bringing the exodus to 75,000 people or 1 in 40 members of the american population. they traveled to canada,

britain, and the baa ham mas and some even to africa and india. wherever they went, the voyage of exile was a trip into the unknown. they left behind relatives, friends, careers and land. the entire world in which they built their lives. for them, america was a less of an asylum than a potential period of time. it was the british empire that was their asylum providing incentives to help them start over. evacuation day didn't mark the end. it was a fresh beginning carrying them into a dynamic uncertain new world. now, i just read you the first couple pages of the book, and in this book what i tried to do is lay out and explain what happened to the loyalists next because our stories end with the conflicts in 1783, but for this

population, the repercussions went on and unfolded in distant places. i tried to distill the experiences of the 60,000 refugees into a meaningful overview, and this afternoon, i'll be more grossly reductionist in the remarks because after sketching the big picture, i'll focus on one story of 60,000 people. let me explain the big picture. stereotypes suggest that loyalists were shared elite profile that they were white, wealth, centric members of the colonial population, but it ranged across the spectrum, social, geographic, ethnic, and religious spectrum of early america. notably, not all loyalists were even white. about 20,000 black slaves during

the revolution responded to promises extended by british governors to offer them freedom if they agreed to come and join the red coats. again, about 20,000 patriot owned slaves joined the british making this the largest mass emancipation in american history until the era of the civil war. by the same token, many american indian nations were drawn into this conflict and divided by it, and for them, they had often been harassed for generations by land-hungry colonists. they had partnered in previous wars with france and so on, so many native americans joined the war on the british side, the moo hawks in the north especially. the elements of the stereotype is worth correcting. loyalists are often referred to

as tory, the nickname for the british conservative party. loyalists were conservative, couldn't see the future, the innovation was to become republican. now, in fact, many prominent loyalists were actually reformers in their own way, # and they advanced schemes for reform that are worth paying attention to and anticipates later developments elsewhere in the british empire. for most of the people who were caught on the front lines of this conflict, which they called a civil war, not a revolution. this wasn't so much a war of ideals as it was often a war of or deals, a war in this violence came to their front doors. they had windows smatched, live -- livestock poisenned.

the ideology end up being important and compelling tens of thousands of loyalists to take shelter during the war and then decide to leave the colonies at the end of it. what happened to them next and where did they go? well, fewer than 15% of these refugees went back to britain, and it wasn't back for most of them because for all that american colonists had been raised to think of britain as home, very few of them had actually been there, and so when they went to britain, they found themselves in an alien place different from the surroundings they knew here in the colonies. the vast majority of the loyalists, more than half of them, relocated to eastern canada, particularly to nova scotia that received 30,000 of the refugees doubling the population overnight, leading to the creation of a new province

called new brunswick to accommodate the new arrivals. another 10,000 or so of the loyalists moved south, particularly those who lived in georgia, south carolina, and north, and they traveled to jamaica and the bahamas and brought with them the exported slaves, the 15,000 slaves who traveled along with the black and white loyalists. some of the loyalists even ranged further. the those surprising aspect happened in 1791 when 1200 of the black loyalists, the freed slaves, moved from their initial place of refuge in canada across the ocean to west africa. they did it under the sponsorship of british abolitionists who wanted to found a free black colony on the coast of black africa, and the loyalists were the pioneer

settlers of what was free town in sierra leone. they were more fortunate than others who were ended up as convicts and other loyalists end up in india, including two sons of the one of the most infamous loyalists of all, the turncoat benedict arnold. he has two sons who go to india and has a half indian grant son. the point of this within just a few years of the end of the revolution, the map of the loyalists disapra looks like the map of the british empire as a whole. this points to the key features i wanted to show about the significance of looking at this because it makes sense of a

seeming paradox. the american revolution was the greatest single defeat for the british empire until the era of world war ii. this is the greatest loss of territory. it plunged the empire into enormous debt. it was particularly a sort of humiliating kind of defeat as they saw their own closest clonnists break away, and yet, within just a decade or so, britain had bounced back to a striking extent, and it was to be the british empire that the leading world power for the interty of the 19th century. how do we explain the paradox of britain coming out of a devastating defeat, and yet in short order going on to rule the world? well, we usually think about the sort of international significance of the american revolution in terms of the spirit of 1776; right? the values that, you know, helped mobilize other people

around the world to express their own desire for liberty, but, in fact, i contend it's by looking at the revolution's impact on the enduring british empire we see an equally significant international consequence of this war, and in the wake of the american revolution we see the british empire becoming a great loser. they regroup. they consolidate. they retool in three key ways which i think we can label the spirit of 1783. you won't here that proclaimed in the street of tripoli or the square. it's the significance of making this empire the global head quarters for a century. there's three key features. one is territorial expansion. the fact of the loyalists map looks like the map of the british empire is not an accident.

they become pioneer settlers in different parts of the empire like sierra leone. it was put forward by an american loyalist and another feature of this spirit of 1783 is the clarified sense of imperial moral purpose particularly. this is apparent in a variety of dimensions, again, regarding loyalists, so, for example, the british government offers these refugees a whole range of charitable members to get them started, free passage to other british domains, land grants to establish themselves aany. they give them basic food rations, things like hose and shoes and nails and a raft of things that represents what modern aide agencies give out to refugees today. they had to uphold the

commitment of freedom to black loyalists which is heavily contested of black patriots, but the british stick to this, and finally, the british also end up establishing a government commission which gives loyalists compensation for the property that they lost in america, and this is, at the time, a novel expansion of contemporary ideas of state welfare which barely resemble its current form. in all these ways, a commitment to the empire is a humanitarian entity. yet, there's a final element to this. at the same time they are being expansive and sort of humanitarian, the british also realize that the defeat in america means they have to change their governing style in ways. in particular they realize what's going wrong in america is that the colonists have too much

liberty. in the aftermath of the american revolution, you see the british authorities being a bit more tight handed, a bit more author tearian -- authoritarian. this is a shock to the loyalist refugees who have come out of the colonies where things were easier and go into the post revolutionary empire and find themselves at odds with the new style. what i was surprised by in researching the book is find in places like st. john, new brunswick, even free town sierra leone, they are rebelling against misrepresentation and lower taxes, a claim familiar to us from revolutionary history. now, to give you a flavor of all of this, the book -- those are the big argumentings -- arguments in this book, but it's

a narrative of individual figures. one of the i things i was concerned to do is recover the experiences of the people who are a neglected population in our his historical understanding. what i want to do is read to you portions of the book that explain the story of the first refugee who kind of drew me into this project, and she was a georgia loyalist called e elizabeth johnson, and she wrote a memoir i came across in research. i made a photocopy of it with me and this discover google books put it online in short order. that was extremely convenient. johnston wrote a memoir, and it weaves in and out in various ways. i want to give you a bit of a

flavor of the book and her life and what remains. she was about 12 years old when the war began. her father was a well-off -- he was sort of a planter in georgia, reasonably well established on a plantation outside of savannah, had a minor government office, and so when the war began, he was accosted by local patriots who wanted to sign on to a local patriot association and refused to do so. he was able to run away, but his 12-year-old daughter was just left there. her mother died. she was an only child. she is went to the countryside to stay with relatives and ultimately family friends in savannah. the war went on, the years went on, her father was fighting with the british. after being three years apart,

they were reunited. they remet and at that time met her future husband, a fellow brother officer of her father. her father was not happy about the match. her future husband, william johns ton, was one the dashing fashionables of occupied british new york. he was a sort of gambler and a flirt, very charming, he had been a medical student before the war, but was happy to fore sake his books for the gaming table. in any case, they get married, and so it is that her marry life unfolds against the backdrop of british defeat in america. as the british pull out of different locations in the colonies, elizabeth and her husband, william, who is still in british forces move with them from one city to another. let me try to, again, jumping through different parts of the book fell you a -- tell you a little bit about the first set of migrations.

charleston is being -- i'm sorry, savannah is being evacuated and join the fleet to go to charleston. now, it was an unusual choice for elizabeth to go to charleston with william rather than to st. augustine. she was 7 months pregnant and she was to stay in savannah under a friend's protection until she was fitter for moving. they had already been apart, and she wanted no more of it. she suffered the loneliness of raising their first son by herself and had a passionate temper while william was away at war. she had another reason to have william close at home. william had fallen into his old habit of gam --

gambling that threatened to wreck their growing family. he wrote to her father with hang dog contrition and wanted support. what was worse, his behavior opened a rift with his own father and sisters. you know not how wretched you made me and cruel to disstress a father who just has a care to see his children happy. he was not a man to be alienated lightly. a rift with him cuts them off from the best source of support. when british power collapsed around her, she followed her impulse and her spouse. my husband would not like the separation, and i positively refuse to remap. not once did she mention the issues of principle involved in leaving her home nor did she note the obvious impetus for the

departure. every single one of the relations were prescribed, but in her own telling, she did not leave for reasons of political sentiment, but emotional ones, the bonds of love. they arrived in charleston is find that city in the throes of may ham. there were sharnlgs of food and cash and more than 10,000 civilians clammerring for relief and reassurance. while the city is evacuated around them, she gave birth to the first daughter, katharine, in the comfort of a stately house. around her in the emptying city, everything in motion. it's impossible to describe what confusion people of all seem to be in.

the one is buying everything he can to complete a stock of good. the second is searching for a passage to another troop. the third is going from house to house to collect his debts. though they have no property to handle in charleston, they also faced fresh choices. william's regimen was due to ship out to new york city along with most. for away and likely facing evacuation itself, new york made little sense for her and her children. this time they decided she would go to st. augustine and stay with relatives until he could join them there to establish their first real-family home. in early december 1782, elizabeth stepped into a small boat with her kids and road out to the harbor. it was like cruising into a jigsaw puzzle. above her loomed the curved wooden walls of a city afloat dark with tar and the outline of

figures. row boats raced ripples across the river. there was furniture, livestock and even the bells of the church on the waiting ships. more than 1200 white loyalists and 2600 blacks splashed out to join a convoy bound for jamaica. other loyalist soldiers gathered to sail out. there were government officials who joined a convoy for britain. finally, the soldiers began assembly on the city port to board the transports for new york. two days later, the americans formally reoccupied charleston while they swayed out to sea in opposite directions. he to new york city, she to join the rapidly growing loyalist community in east florida. now, many of the refugees went

to east florida and thought it was the perfect place to rebuild. it was like georgia and south carolina and there was land available and they were promised it as sort of an asylum. the problem, however, was that the british were going to hand florida over to spain and the peace treaty and the loyalists when they first went didn't know that, but it was going to be a horrifying thing. after three tedious weeks, elizabeth traveled down the georgia coast to st. augustine always in motion even in her sleep. when they turned in, they felt their stomach dropping thud as they struck a sand bar. they cleared the obstruction which is more than said for another american convoy that wrecked and ruined many exported properties. half a dozen ships skelled on the sand, sentiments lost. the first impression of the flat foreign place were not good.

she found her in-laws dissatisfied of their situation. little andrew was sick. the weather was constantly wet or cloudy, and as she wrote her husband, she repented of not going with you in new york for what is it being separated. it soon awakens her to the charms and curiosities of the spot. she would have recognized dozens of familiar faces there, though georgia, this was not, she could see that much in the compressed shelfs of the houses, the former san fransisco, now the army barracks, and another islander recruited a decade earlier for laborers as a settlement further south. the breeze slapped against her skirts, and what a pleasure it

was after the supply shortages of wartime savannah to feast on fish caught fresh from the sea. i never was in better house or fleshy as during my residence there she later remembered. best of all, william got leave for a brief visit from new york to plan their future face to face. could it be that loyalists would achieve and east florida what two decades of imaginative british colonization efforts had not making plantations in swamps and hoping towns from struggle outposts. in the event, in april 1783, the news of the peace treaty hit east florida loyalists like a hurricane. article five that neutered the possibility of receiving compensation from the states pailed to them next to article five of britain's peace with spain and france by which britain agreed to seed east and

west florida to spain with no strings attached. it seemed reasonable to diplomats who wanted to keep the strategically places than the economically disappointed florida. it yanked the ground below the feet of the refugees. they had to leave their homes often more than once and accepted the challenge of starting over in an underdeveloped land. this one hard io sile line up was denied them, and by their own government at that. . .

have another option. they are reasonably well off and elizabeth johnston's father is able to sell off the sleeves and use the proceeds to move on in their case to britain. britain will detect a theme in all these places. they were not real happy in the places the end of going and britain was no exception. the johnstons and unsettling because william johnston of the medical students and at that time edwin bird had the best medical school so they go there. he finishes his medical training but like many of the refugees they find the opportunities for employment are not so great.

there's already a lot of professionals in britain and they don't miss a surly need the colonial upstarts' to fill in the ranks so they move on again under the patronage of the war time supporter of williams to jamaica and the last part of the story that i will tell you about in a little more depth is their experience in jamaica which at the time was the richest colony in the british empire and seen on the fees' a an alluring place for the refugees. its beauty could take your breath away from the sparkling surface of the water, swept up to the blue mountains climbing into the clouds. over the rippled slopes felt living green blanket textured in the vegetable forms of the tropics the giant firms and bertinelli ads, plassey plants, muscular trees draped in epiphytes, stands of bamboo and palms. when you turned past the altar with of the harbor in the broken stone in the capitol in the 1692

earthquake. in kingston the replacement, the greatest british mitropoulos in the caribbean. they had circles around the mass, the some of the water into liquid diamonds. no wonder they were captivated by it. such hills and mountains and verdure everything so bright and a day it is delightful gushed one arrival on the cruise toward the spectacular landscape. in 18th-century diffuse light compared the bay of kingston to the bay of naples with the blue mountains standing in for serbia's at the submerged ruins of the port like a fan, pompeii under the sea. others like the grandeur and a supplementary simply overcome them blocking language from their lips. whatever else they knew of the silent and they could see it wasn't the 13 colonies anymore. >> now jamaica was a very wealthy place.

it had wonderful sugar plantations that generated enormous amounts of wealth on britain and the other things that made it so rich is rather challenging as an environment for the white refugees. one of the features of it being a tropical island is it was written with disease which will say in a moment. and others that made it so wealthy is it had a big plantation worked by gigantic numbers of slaves into the ratio slaves to the white on the island is something like eight to one, the whites were tiny minority and they lived in constant terror that there would be slave uprisings the woodblock them out and white women were particularly rare on jamaica because for the most part the people who actually lived there were professionals involved in the plantation business and very few whites actually made a family life. as elizabeth johnston finds herself in this environment which seems to be full of promise and yet turns out to be a very alienating sort of lonely

place. and so william johnston is busy working here during an attempt to cure all of these diseases which are all over particularly things like yellow fever but elizabeth feels fairly isolated. i will read you a little bit about them about their life. johnston is a doctor on a slave plantations but he's treating a lot of black patients. they continue to treat white patients as well. a pan american yellow fever epidemic in 1793 proved a bonanza to the practice when the merchant clients of kingston called on him to attend to the steelers and the incoming ships. yellow fever produces internal bleeding and jaundice that starts with a headache than fever, nausea and vomiting. when the vomit turns black with blood it is almost over. the victim is usually dead within days. dr. johnston has the technique of bloodletting and other doctors prescribe for the

disease daube one patient after another with calomel. the harm as much as it helps. sometimes there were 17 or more funerals a day elizabeth johnston remembered with a distressed that the family house and the house we treat justify kingston she had a large jamaica born crude of children to worry about. eliza, born in 1787, lilly in 1789, then john, jane farley and james walk heldman. johnston congratulate herself that none of her family contracted yellow fever, but the resistance to the island diseases wouldn't last much longer. by the end of 1793 the johnstons youngest daughter was dead of scarlet fever at age two. you couldn't avoid death but you could come to terms with it as if to replace the lost child the johnstons named the newest infant born in 1794 james farley as well. with her the johnstons weren't taking any chances because

williams constant exposure to smallpox he arranged to have the baby girl inoculated. although they had become spread in britain by then there was always in jamaica by then that there was always some risks that rather developing antibodies to fight off the controlled infection the patient might contract the fiddle case of smallpox instead. they anxiously monitored the incision for the virus being applied to make sure the infection didn't spread. the second jane for early johnston, just three months old, wasn't so lucky. after lobbying on my lap for some time on a pillow a very sad spectacle one store being black. her angelic belies never to open again. she carried the body from the lab and convulsed on the floor in a prayer and grief. she had lost two children already. one in edinburg and another in jamaica. perhaps it had something to do

with the sense that she could have stopped it, that she had actually approved and probably watched when the fatal germs were applied. there was nothing familiar around her, quote, having no female relation to be with me, only black servants of having to think about a direct everything for so many little ones undisclosed, but it seems to much to bear. she dillinger serious depression they offered to adopt the johnston stopper eliza and take her with them to britain. we couldn't for some weeks ago our mind to part with her, johnston come fast as they wrestled with the dilemma faced generations of parents and in an inhospitable outpost better to keep the children close to home exposed to tropical dangers and to send them thousands of miles away home to distant britain and the end up sending the children back.

as the pressures of mortality closed in around them the johnstons discovered jamaica to be false refuge for them, too. the williams succeeded where the many refugees hadn't liked her carving out a professional career the hostility of the alien environment broke down the family but physically and psychologically. she admitted defeat and returned to edinburg with of the duty to their health and their morals, and of quote final william, who had to stay at the practice remained in jamaica. fully 40 years later, the grief still inside her when she remembered, quote, the morning of the sad day when i heard the boat had come to take us on board for another subornation, another atlantic crossing. i uttered screams that distressed my husband to such a degree he then would have been glad if i had given up going. he begged me to let him go on board and bring things back but all i could say is it is too

late. but as the figures on the docks dwindled into the blurs and the ruins of port royal shimmered away beneath the ship and the green blue mountains receded into the out lines she grew strength from a fresh source. in her darkest hours of morning and isolation, johnston had been saved. she saw the arms of an unfamiliar got stretched out to increase her, a loving accessible presence, the god of the baptist. the old anglican piety she had been trying to console herself with since florida seemed cold war now become a quote on quote to her now. she found solace in the preaching of the center is. her own path to conversion through the personal of people in distress seems to crystallize the larger process of recovery torn by war. she lost so much in jamaica in this discovery she could carry with her always. the memo she wrote much later

saturated this religious language that she did have this experience because things would go on in a similar way. lots of migrations, lots of losses, lots of separations. and so it was finally after back and forth across the atlantic between the couple or deaths of children, more travails, that finally and 1806 for 30 years after the declaration of independence elizabeth johnston finally moved to nova scotia the number one retreat for the baliles refugees. she arrived there within six months her husband william died in jamaica, she stayed on in nova scotia and in the that having her family around her going forward so a final word on elizabeth johnston that by a generation after the war, many of them like her have found resting places and by the time johnston rehearsed the agent of her life for her memoirs and

1837 she was 73-years-old. her sight dimmed by cataracts, her memory twisted around trauma like a tree growing around barbwire all of those movements, all of those abrasions and so many deaths. she had come of age during the civil war and spent decades of her life coping with this location and bereavement. yet there was no anger in johnston's recollections, more any nostalgic longing for her lost home. if anything she found itself satisfied for she had read it herself in the new home now. little did i think all i and all my family would ultimately settle in nova scotia she recalled while she retrieved social comfort she had never before known, her surviving children became prominent members of nova scotia's professional and political elite and in some cases achieving positions of higher status than they could ever have plausibly enjoyed had they remained in the united states. after all of their trials and migrations, the johnstons had

arrived and evolves and american loyalists into british north american patriots. to follow johnston's narrative, these lawyers -- excuse me, these losers were winners in the end. i will leave it at that and i'm happy to take questions. [applause] >> beyond the empire in canada, i was wondering if you get the sense that there is a strong application as loyalists in the other areas. >> beyond in canada the answer would be no, and i did the the reason for that is the loyalists or the beginning subject of the british empire and the and also subject of the british empire. and so i see the absence of this kind of thomas felch of, lost

calls thinking as a reflection of the fact they are successfully absorbed into the refurbished british empire and johnston as one example of course in canada where this is most pronounced but you can see versions of that in the diaspora as well. >> i read the first 100 pages but i was struck by the number of blah, blah less and one-third of the group. when they went to these other places. the free blacks on the case of the abolition in any of these parts of the british empire? >> it did. of loyalists who left who are free blacks which is the same ratio as in the colonies, abolitionism was a sentiment that had been articulated in the

run-up to the american revolution in britain where slavery was effectively eagle from 1772 on word but it gets at a push forward because these influential slave owners are no longer a part of the empire and partly because there is a new black population that's free and britain sees this increasingly as a contrast by upholding black freedom they are different from americans who are in shining black slavery as they see it. so yes, the american revolution is seen as a galvanizing factor and accelerating the abolitionist cause in the british empire in the 1780's of the time of the population of britain and the empire. it should be said despite the british even to this day hour very celebratory of the tradition and there is a lot of sort of reference paid to those early abolitionists. it must be said the slave trade wasn't abolished for a whole

generation yet there is no idea that there would be freed blacks and that their freedom would be upheld by britain was gaining ground in these years. >> i'm curious about one particular person you mentioned in the book that goes beyond just the general picture manly the son of benjamin franklin, william i think with his income and the question is to what extent was it political loyalty to britain [inaudible] to what extent does that play out in this case and in general how much do we know about this

which happened to be known hint [inaudible] >> well, i think the first thing to say is the case the gentleman refers to is benjamin franklin, the great founding father, his son william was a well-known and loyalist, the governor of new jersey, he ended up being in prison and became ultimately the leader of the loyalist community and occupied new york and then bitter and disheartened refuge iain britain. now the rest between them was deeply felt. william was benjamin's only son, only child -- not only child, only son, and they basically ceased communications because of this and this became most significant of the time of the peace negotiations of the end of the war and which benjamin franklin was one of the key u.s.

negotiators and over the course of many months the five peace negotiators are meeting in paris and hashing out the terms of the independence of the united states and there are lots of sticking points along the way that there was until they get to the one of last one and the kind of fall of 1782i guess it is, and the sticking point concerns whether the u.s. is going to be made responsible for giving compensation to loyalist whose property is the confiscated during the war, and on this point most of the other american negotiators are okay with it adams and john jay that when gen franklin will not give in on this point and he says if you grant compensation i'm not going to sign the treaty. we have to keep on fighting the war. so if you want the reverse, you know, and it anticipates his own leader access of sort of property related vengeance. he writes william out of his

will leader and the two rarely ever meet again. and i think they do better and what i think about most is getting into the personality and the individual experience is important for explaining how history has operated. >> you say in your introduction this is the first book about the loyalists, exiles, refugees. now that you have written this what do you think should be the second book? not necessarily by you but somebody else who picks up where you left off. if someone picks up where you left off where would you like to see the next book on this topic? >> that's a great question. i think well, one thing that needs to be written in a better forum is what happens to the loyalists who don't leave.

there's a lot of sort of dissertations on this, some very recent. there are some monographs but i would like to see more about the reintegration of loyalists and how that might change the picture of the creation of the union in their early republika so there would be the kind of american history side. there's also the international history which i think would be a natural next step. i don't think i will do it but i am inclined the american revolution is seen at the beginning of the age of the revolution. there's revolution in france and he and a lot of the people in america and in all of this period the revolutionary and napoleonic war in 1815 there is an enormous amount of political switching and movement and refugees leaving from pd and france and from all over the world, and i would love to see some sort of book that is able to apply similar approaches to looking at the next loyalty of

the figures caught in the other revolutionary movements so there's an interesting history to be written about the shape of the united states and the connection with some of these themes, and i think also a kind of interesting comparative history to be dubbed the british empire, the french empire and the american ambitions in places like south america through these figures. >> time for one or two more questions. [inaudible] [applause] >> this event took place at the harvard book store in cambridge massachusetts. to find out more, visit harvard.com. cold play of the hurricane might have from darkness to freedom with the foreword by nelson mandela and your

co-author is clemsky. uzi the main purpose of writing the book is to share with you that i have discovered truth to be the truth. the love of truth is the spirit of man. given where i was and for how long i was there i have no business at all being here now. >> you say that you were in jail 40 something years. what do you mean by that? >> the fact we are born into a prison, we are born perfect complete with all of our possibilities in tact but we are also born into the world of sleeping people, the level of human insanities where hate and

war and death and destruction the so we are actually born into prison so i was in that prison for the first 40 years of my life until i was able to wake up and get out of there and realize who i really am. >> let's come to who you are in a second. directly incarcerated in prison for about 20 years, 1964 or five. >> guest: 1966 to '85. >> host: 66 to 85, and the charge was having murdered three people and wounded one and of our. >> guest: having murdered somebody. to be accused of murder is bad enough, but to be accused of being a racist murderer is doubly bad and that is why was accused of being, a triple racist murderer.

>> host: white racist? >> guest: because it was white people killed. >> host: and the charge you somehow targeted because of their race. >> guest: because it lacked a bartender had been killed by a white man in another part of town that might they felt this was a racial motive. in their early 50s when the country was still segregated when black folks were not allowed to eat in restaurants or go to school or ride on certain parts of bosses drink out of the waterfront in or have equal voting rights at the time and that is what was going on in this country at that time which was a terrible thing and so that's why i was accused of being was a terrible racist murder.

>> host: and you write about the growing of a household those violent, difficult, facing your father across the living room with shotguns. when >> guest: my family life wasn't violent, but you have to realize this may i will be 75-years-old and so my mother and father come from a generation where they fought if a child put his hands on his parents or even threaten their parents since they brought you into this world they would take you out of this world as well. that was the type of society. >> host: but described to the people who are watching who might want to read the book what you would be facing your father with a shotgun and he with a shotgun facing you. >> guest: i was angry and i confronted my brother. my brother who was a highly

successful actor, he was going to harvard, he was one of the youngest to graduate from harvard university with a ph.d. he later became assistant to the schools of boston and i was in and out of the reformatory schools during my youth and so my father had this sort of to choose between which one he is going to support and when i came home from the military in 1956i heard that my brother was hanging out with homosexuals and when we were children growing up. when we were children all of these folks would dress up on halloween like when and they look better than the women on the streets, you know and he was from the occasional harvard

university and doing the same thing. so i confronted my brother about that and we started to fight, and of course i beat him up and that's when my father got -- that's when my father got involved in this. and my father jumped me because of that and i told him i wouldn't allow anyone to put their hands on me in anger any more of and he ran and got his shotgun and i got my shotgun. this is the same thing that happened to marvin gaye and his father and that is why his father shot him and killed him and hadn't of been for my mother my father would have killed me as well. >> host: now what's interesting here is you just described yourself as technically having been in jail for 20 years, 66 to 85 and the

violence and the whole world of hatred that you described you say that's been in jail for you for 40 plus years until you discover yourself. let me read again from your book this is an interesting moment because you say you're going to be 74-years-old. you write i was a prizefighter at one point, soldier at one point, conduct at one point, jailhouse lawyer at one point. you see were executive director of a group that was called the association of defense of the wrongly convicted at one point and today you are the ceo of the innocent international group and is is if i had to choose an epitaph to be carved on my tombstone remember this is reubin hurricane carter speaking it would simply read he was just enough. this came because somebody in high school audience asked what he would want for your epitaph and now you are a man bob dylan

wrote a song about you. nelson mandela has written the foreword and spoken about you and i know that nelson mandela was talking to me about how he loves boxing. >> guest: he was a boxer himself. >> host: and about someone like him who was in jail and has come out of it. secures nelson mandela, bob dylan, even tony bennett. these people have all known you and it comes time for you to speak about yourself and you say for your epitaph it should be he was just enough to have the courage to stand up for his convictions no matter what problem his actions may cost him he was just enough to perform a miracle to wake up to his a scape of the universal prisoner replete to regain his humanity and living hell. he was just enough. >> guest: when people hear this just enough i'm sure they are going to be thinking to